A melting pot may be best path to unity

Treating cultures as a homogenous group doesn't reflect reality. I FELT a chill pass over me last week as I sat in a panel discussion on multiculturalism in Europe at the International Political Science Conference. The issues being discussed were the same as those my colleagues are researching in Australia, but the emerging directions in Europe are disconcerting. There is a dynamic of pendulum swinging between multiculturalism and assimilation that we should be worried about. Advertisement: Story continues below To explain why, it is useful to start with a bit of background. Australia's official policy towards immigrants after WWII was assimilation. Australia drew migrants from a broadening range of countries during this period to power economic growth. But we imposed tough conditions on the new arrivals, who were expected to simply vanish into the dominant Anglo culture. By the late 1960s, a string of reports highlighted the costs of the policy. Immigrants had poor physical and mental health. They were faring badly in the labour market. They were poorer and more likely to be unemployed. They were also being let down by the institutions that were supposed to be a safety net of equality: they were struggling in a school system that made no concessions to their language background or cultural experience; and they were disadvantaged in dealing with government, as nothing was explained in their language or tailored to their unique needs. It was clear that the policy of assimilation was actually creating an underclass. A policy that was blind to how tough it is to arrive in a new Rosetta Stone Software country, and that gave people no recognition or support, plunged migrants to the bottom of the social pile. The response to growing community and government concerns was that the policy pendulum swung to embrace multiculturalism in the 1970s. In the new rhetoric, migrants were to be encouraged to form community groups and gain social and psychological support through continuing their cultural practices. Schools and government would acknowledge the diversity in their midst and accommodate the differences. This was all to flow into more equal outcomes in the labour market and greater social equality. However, two serious problems have emerged. The first has been the effect of governments trying to define a culture. Policies that fund communities have worked to treat cultures as homogenous groups and have tended to let leaders, often older religious men, define the culture. In the process they have failed to recognise that cultures are made up of thousands of often competing and conflicting threads, and are in a constant state of change. If a stagnant and conservative version of a culture is institutionalised, it becomes oppressive; the debate and diversity within a community are silenced. It is difficult for young people to challenge traditional beliefs and they end up being imprisoned by a policy that was supposed to support them. The second problem is the impact on broader societal tensions. The term "multiculturalism" has always carried a number of different meanings. For many people it is just a catch-phrase for embracing diversity. But for others it conjures an image of separate communities living in parallel. The danger lies with this latter image. Political racism works when leaders divide people into separate groups, and then focus on the conflict between them. The rhetoric creates an illusion of homogeneity within both groups and sets the scene for differences to seem irreconcilable. The language of multiculturalism inadvertently follows the same pattern by painting a picture of a society divided into separate groups and suggesting that the different cultures are homogenous and unique.

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